Ered Wethrin and Ered Gorgoroth are the names of imaginary mountains from the mind of fantasy author and literary scholar, J. R. R. Tolkien. If Tolkien had drawn them, they would look like this. These mountain peaks form part of the Franz Josef or the Fox Glacier on the central west coast of New Zealand’s southern most island. Like all glaciers, it is retreating only it is melting at an accelerated rate because it is vertical in contrast to the horizontal glaciers that are melting albeit at a slower rate. It is a real world magical place and like the world Tolkien envisioned in the Lord of the Rings books, it is changing and fading away. This is my interpretation of this magical place as seen from a helicopter at sunset in January of 2014.
